How can it be an "essential" service when so many households, mainly the elderly, do not have it? In my view a service only becomes "essential" when there are zero alternatives.
To those of us brought up on the internet, we think of it as essential only because it is easier than the available alternatives. (Some "youngsters" would even consider mobile telephony as an "essential" service"!)

Edited by deleted (Sun 16-Nov-14 14:03:21)

In reply to a post by Stevenage_Neil:

How can it be an "essential" service when so many households, mainly the elderly, do not have it? In my view a service only becomes "essential" when there are zero alternatives.
To those of us brought up on the internet, we think of it as essential only because it is easier than the available alternatives. (Some "youngsters" would even consider mobile telephony as an "essential" service"!)

Let's put this another way; one's quality of life is easier with an internet connection. Yes, if you don't subscriber to an internet service, then their are communal facilities that can be used and a host of other ways to obtain the service you want but often at tremendous inconvenience.

There will never be 100% connectivity to meet your "essential" rule in much the same way that not everyone is connected to a main sewage system or for that matter can get a mobile signal. However the time must have arrived to have an obligation to fix an internet fault within a reasonable time frame. I define that as being 7 working days, would you disagree with that?

We're wandering off topic here........let's try an analogy to the original post:-

Your car is not performing well so you call in a garage to fix it. They take the car to their garage and remove the engine and strip it down. They then discover it needs a skilled expert to fix the fault and he is not available for a couple of days. You are Teed off with the delay and call another garage to get it fixed. The original garage cannot do anything because they cancelled the skilled expert as a result of the second garage assuming control of the repair. The other garage cannot do anything because the engine is out and in pieces.

Not strictly analogous, but close enough.

In reply to a post by Stevenage_Neil:

We're wandering off topic here........let's try an analogy to the original post:-

Your car is not performing well so you call in a garage to fix it. They take the car to their garage and remove the engine and strip it down. They then discover it needs a skilled expert to fix the fault and he is not available for a couple of days. You are Teed off with the delay and call another garage to get it fixed. The original garage cannot do anything because they cancelled the skilled expert as a result of the second garage assuming control of the repair. The other garage cannot do anything because the engine is out and in pieces.

Not strictly analogous, but close enough.

Fair point. I need to seek advice on this before I respond, if indeed I do!

In my opinion the O.P. could have saved himself a lot of grief by a simple message informing Talk Talk that unless his fault was repaired to his satisfaction within a reasonable time he wanted the service cancelled on a specified date in the future.
In this way all parties would have known what the situation was and the ensuing chaos might have been avoided.